Page 11 - ELG2104 Apr Issue 475

NEWS
Just how secure is the Duolingo English Test?

Duolingo launched its online “Humans are in charge of the
Duolingo English Test five years design and the evaluation,” says
ago to be an alternative to the tra­ Dr Alina von Davier, chief of
ditional test centre model. assessment at Duolingo. “We use
The education company’s stat­ machines and humans in places SPECIALIST, DUOLINGO ENGLISH TEST
ed aim is to ‘develop both the they both perform best – that’s
best education in the world and essential to what we do.”
make it universally available, us­ WORDS SOPHIE WODZAK, RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS
ing technology to reduce barriers The testing
and increase access to education’.
Further, the company believes community has
that test centres exist because, in always seen
the old model, security was more
important than convenience. humans as the
Using a combination of techno­ gold standard You would have to take 1,000 tests to see a repeated question
logy and education experts, Duo­
lingo believes it can leverage statistics, computer vision, bio­ The edtech company is confi­
language assessment, psychomet­ The Duolingo English Test is metrics and natural language pro­ dent it’s providing a secure, reli­
rics, statistics and applied lin­ what’s known as a digital­first test. cessing algorithms to evaluate test­ able English language test that is
guistics to create and monitor a This starts with the content of the taker behaviour and certify scores. available on demand any time,
secure test. test itself, which must meet strin­ “The testing community has anywhere in the world – all you
gent online delivery security proto­ always seen humans as the gold need is an hour, a quiet room and
cols. To this end, to minimise the standard, but once you start look­ an internet connection.
exposure of what might be in the ing carefully at how humans per­ The test costs US$49 and cer­
test, each exam uses questions from form, you’ll see there’s a variance tified results are available within
a database of hundreds of thou­ there, too,” says Dr von Davier. 48 hours. The scores are accept­
sands of items, so that no two test “By leveraging AI alongside hu­ ed by over 3,000 institutions
takers receive the same exam. man expertise, we are able to cre­ worldwide, but will immigration
Once a test is uploaded, a team ate, administer and review a valid, authorities still need convincing
of proctors use a combination of high­quality assessment.” it’s secure?

editorial@elgazette.com 11